Joe Kent, who served as President Donald Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center director before resigning over his opposition to the war with Iran, is offering a stark warning on the conflict.
“The American people didn’t have the full story and our country did not have a vital national interest in this current fight,” Kent said at the annual Catholic Prayer for America gala on Thursday, adding that he left the Trump administration because he couldn’t continue the job “in good conscience.”
The special forces combat veteran has become a leading voice of MAGA’s anti-war wing since casting doubt on Trump officials’ claim that Iran posed an imminent threat.
His public resignation letter blamed Israel and the American media for whipping up a campaign of lies that led the White House to strike Iran on Feb. 28. He also claimed Israel manufactured the civil war in Syria, where his first wife, Shannon, died while serving in the Navy.
“I will not, in good conscience, send young men and women off to die in foreign battlefields,” Kent said to hearty applause, which followed a standing ovation when he took the stage at the Catholic dinner.
At least 13 American service members have been killed since the start of the war. More than 200 U.S. troops have been wounded.
The White House fired back on Friday, telling the Daily Beast that Kent’s resignation letter was “self-aggrandizing” and “riddled with lies.”
“Most egregious were Kent’s false claims that the largest state sponsor of terrorism somehow did not pose a threat to the United States and that Israel forced the President into launching Operation Epic Fury,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle wrote. “As Commander-in-Chief, President Trump took decisive action based on strong evidence which showed that the terrorist Iranian regime posed an imminent threat and was preparing to strike Americans first.”
The rift between the Trump administration and its former darling is not just a war of words. The FBI has launched an investigation into Kent over claims he improperly divulged classified information.
The probe reportedly began before this week’s resignation drama.
Since his departure from the federal government, Kent has linked up with the Iran war’s best-known critic on the right, Tucker Carlson.
In a marathon interview posted to Carlson’s YouTube channel, Kent reaffirmed his view that Iran was not close to developing a nuclear weapon either when the U.S. and Israel began their airstrikes in February, or last summer, when they jointly bombed the country’s nuclear facilities.
After Kent left the administration, Trump said, “It’s a good thing that he’s out because he said Iran was not a threat.”
The war with Iran remains mostly unpopular in the U.S. Recent polling shows more than half of Americans do not support the military campaign. However, fresh numbers from a Politico survey found that the vast majority of Trump’s voters in the 2024 election back the strikes on Iran. Of those who identify as MAGA, the number is above 80 percent.
The conflict has been effective in killing top leaders of Iran’s brutal regime, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. However, far from crumbling, the regime has fought back with strikes around the region and effectively closed the vital Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical passages for oil tankers. The price of oil has surged as a result, climbing to more than $110 a barrel from pre-war levels near $70.
This has resulted in a spike in gas prices of nearly 25 percent, on average.
Markets have roiled with uncertainty, as many fear the war has created deep and enduring instability in the Middle East.
